2. Data gathering This is a boon to people wanting to sell something, but generally not to endusers. for cooking I see a tablet with a skype like program a better investment. Fitness we already have the ability to download the data to a PC. an IoT version will not have the battery life of current devices. Using an NFC connection to a mobile phone would make more sense and reduce battery size/consumption.

3. definitely worthwhile for some things, a car maybe, most household appliances have near zero maintenance. The only thing I have that might benefit is my coffee machine that already puts up a display to descale or whatever when I'm within reach of it and can actually perform the task. If I was away I wouldn't beable to do much with the message and I certainly wouldn't want it calling the serviceman to do a descale. I've repaired my dryer 4 times in the last 30 years, twice for a belt, once for a thermaostat and once for a broken switch. If it had an IoT board you could add 3 times to have a faulty logic board replaced if my dishwasher is anything to go by. Outside the home in mining etc. there would be a big call for it but that's the industrial arena where it'a already being done extensively.

4. This one is an interesting thought although I'm not sure it offers additional utility to existing methods.

5. I've added this one :-) vending machines would benefit but that's more an industrial/commercial use.

1. I'm worried about the weight impacting on expected performance/balance/spin. Basketballs have fairly low mass and are sensitive to such things. The illumination has got to require a sizeable battery and wireless transmission over the required distances too.

It sounds better for industrial uses but don't they already have sensors, networks, data, and analytical tools?

Agreed, Highlander. It has been around in non-consumer venues for decades, even if not always in a pure Internet Protocol form (e.g. there's a long transitional phase of other industrial network protocols connecting to sensors and devices, then gateways tied together with IP). That's why I've never understood the hype.

If I want to know if the milk's bad, one wiff will do it. The temperature offers little value I find milk good for 2-6 days past the used by date and that can be for 2 cartons bought on the same day with the same expiry date.

A fridge that tells me I'm out of milk tells me nothing I don't already know because I used it and what if I bought more fruit juice last week so there's a fruit juice in a milk slot?

I can't for the life of me figure out what I would want an internet connected fridge for (certainly not to browse the web), having a power meter tell me the power is out and therefore the fridge & freezer are off line maybe.

A toaster? well If I'm down the street when the toast is done I won't make it back in time to butter it.

I think control in plants is a good idea and having the power utilities all wired is great, but I just don't see many other actual useful uses for IoT.

Maybe I'm lacking imagination, but in a world where we need to reduce power consumption, adding an ethernet power hog to everything doesn't sound like a good idea.

Does anyone have a difinitive list of things that are going to be attached?

IoT is the Next Big Thing. PCs are in negative growth and smart phones are hitting saturation, so chip-makers need the Next Big Thing so they can sell Lots of Chips. IoT is that Next Big Thing. Trying to define it more specifically than that is beyond the scope of engineering :-)

It's kind of like the history of Artificial Intelligence. Nobody can really define intelligence in any intelligent way. Indeed, Edsger Dijkstra is quoted as saying: "the question of whether machines can think is about as relevant as the question of whether submarines can swim." So the practical definition of Artificial Intelligence was "whatever the DoD is funding this year that's being called AI". Basically, once a mysterious "intelligent" algorithm is understood, it ceases to be intelligence and becomes Mere Automation. OTOH, everybody understands what it means to be funded.

For those who missed it the first dozen times I said this, when I first heard about IoT at a recent ARM TechCon, it took me about five minutes to change IoT into "Internet of Digital Things", or IDioT. I'm going to have fun playing with the many "IoT" chips that will come out since they'll give me cheap computing and connectivity, but as far as end products are concerned I think I'll wait for the next Next Big Thing :-)

Bert, that is the kind of implementation that I saw in many of the Internet toaster generation. There are problems with it, though. It will display on a website, but the data would be hard to extract and use. These implementations need data that is self-describing and interpretable by computers instead of people.Let's change the problem a little. Let's say that the refrigerator manufacturer wants to collect the information to make sure that their products are working. They would want to collect the information from hundreds of devices and run statistical analyses on the data. They might put out version 1.0 of this and start getting data. Then they might realize that it would be useful to collect diagnostic information as well. Version 2.0 would add this capability, but they would still want to collect from the V1 devices. This would be a good reason to tag the data with a version number. They might use HTTP to transfer the data, but another protocol may be more desirable - for example, they might use SSH to log into the device and trigger diagnostics or otherwise interact directly.All of these things can be done using standard protocols, but a standard for the data format would enable allow the same information to be collected across all refrigerators, even if they used different versions of the standard. Many industries have defined XML schemas for things like this, allowing data exchanges to take place.You are correct that standards should be used, but there is also room to create specialized standards across industries or other groups. This can also be done in a proprietary fashion, but that creates islands of data that make things more difficult.